Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to managing systems and managing methods for managing tenants.
Description of the Related Art
Generally, in a cloud-based service system, data storage, user information, and the like is managed in units called tenants, which corresponds to a dedicated area in the system for each customer. A customer tenant held by a customer such as a business or the like, a service provider tenant that provides management/repair services and the like for printers, multifunction peripherals, and the like to a customer, and so on can be given as examples of tenants.
Device configuration information data for printers, multifunction peripherals, and so on, status information data for devices, counter data for numbers of sheets used, status monitoring condition data for devices, notification destination information data used when an abnormal status is detected, and so on are saved in a customer tenant. Meanwhile, information such as customer names, customer contact details, salesperson names, and so on, report creation settings information data that uses a counter for a numbers of sheets used, and so on are saved in a service provider tenant. In a cloud-based service system, the data is managed in units of tenants, and thus a user can only access data within the tenant to which he or she belongs and cannot access other tenants.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2010-108170 discloses a role-based access control method. According to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2010-108170, access is permitted on a role-by-role basis for respective data items and functions, and whether to permit or deny access to data objects and function objects is determined based on a role set for each user.
There are cases where a service provider that provides a service to a customer is removed from a system due to the service provider going bankrupt or the like. In the case where a service provider is removed, a new, second service provider that serves as a replacement will provide the service to the customer. There are also cases where the customer desires to switch to a second service provider even when the first service provider has not been removed from the system.
When switching service providers in this manner, it is necessary for the customer information that had been managed by the first service provider to be migrated to the post-migration second service provider and continue to be used thereafter. However, there are cases where the customer information that had been managed by the first service provider contains information that is not to be migrated to the second service provider. Such information is, for example, personal information, confidential information, and so on such as notification destination information data used when an abnormal status is detected, salesperson names, and so on. On the other hand, the data that can be migrated is device status monitoring condition data, customer names and customer contact details, report creation settings information data that uses a counter for a numbers of sheets used, and so on, for example.
Meanwhile, in the case where the first service provider ceases to exist due to bankruptcy or the like, it is undesirable from the standpoint of security to continue to save the aforementioned types of data in a state in which there is no managing service provider. However, the data cannot be easily deleted from the system before switching to the new second service provider that serves as the replacement.